Thursday, 26 September 2013

Conventional Drugs and Vaccines. The problem is a lack of honesty and transparency

Most people accept conventional drugs and vaccines because they believe them to effective for the purpose they are being taken, and also safe. By and large patients believe them to be safe because each drug, and each vaccine, has gone through a process that has found them to be effective and safe. The logic, for most patients, is simple:

"We are not medically trained, so we trust what our doctors tell us. We trust them because they are assisted and guided by the NHS. And in turn, the NHS is funded by the Department of Health, and the Government. "Surely, we reason, this is assurance enough that the medication we are given by our GP is both effective and safe".

We are further assured that conventional drugs and vaccines go through a process of testing and monitoring which is designed to ensure that they are suitable for us. In the main, it is on this basis that we, as patients, give our consent to conventional medical treatment.

Yet is this trust well placed? Is the conventional medical establishment one that can be trusted with our health, and our lives? Can we rely on it to protect us from dangerous drugs and vaccines?

Or has the conventional medical establishment placed itself entirely in the hands of the big, profitable and highly influential drug companies? Have financial and economic interests perverted conventional health care, and removed the central focus from patient safety to the viability of Big Pharma?

Lucija Tomljenovic, in her paper, "The vaccination policy and the Code of Practice of the Joint Committee on
Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI): are they at odds?" certainly suggests that our trust is misplaced. In summary, the transcripts of the JCVI/DH meetings from the period from 1983 to 2010 appear to show that:

Instead of reacting appropriately by re-examining existing vaccination policies when safety concerns over specific vaccines were identified by their own investigations, the JCVI either a) took no action, b) skewed or selectively removed unfavourable safety data from public reports and c) made intensive efforts to reassure both the public and the authorities in the safety of respective vaccines;

Promoted and elaborated a plan for introducing new vaccines of questionable efficacy and safety into the routine paediatric schedule, on the assumption that the licenses would eventually be granted;

Actively discouraged research on vaccine safety issues;

Deliberately took advantage of parents’ trust and lack of relevant knowledge on vaccinations in order to promote a scientifically unsupported immunisation program which could put certain children at risk of severe long-term neurological damage;

Notably, all of these actions appear to violate the JCVI’s own Code of Practice

Time after time, drug companies are taken to court, and fined heavily for not testing drugs properly, for not releasing key drug information, for the harm and damage drugs have caused patients. And each time the fine is paid, and the drug companies continue 'business as normal', and we are either not told about it, or we assume it is a one-off error.